Bro really tried to sell his subscribers a “50$ a year” subscription to a “wallpaper” app.
Interesting points about the “app”:
- the app has premium and free wallpapers
- the free wallpapers are only available in sd quality and if you want hd youd have to subscribe
- in order to unlock the sd quality you have to watch two 30 second ads.
- theres a wallpaper called “orange” thats just the color orange
Now that’s a big L.
Way more than that.
- requires crazy permissions like user location
- wallpapers are in a publicly accessible s3 bucket
- profit split for wallpaper creators is 50/50 which is worse than most app store splits
- most of the creators actually seem to be current MKBHD employees
- app is either built from a template or an old app that they bought
Source: https://youtu.be/prZ7ZfdFrNs
wallpapers are in a publicly accessible s3 bucket
How are we still doing this, how
remember kids, if you take on responsibilities like renting out a studio space, and hiring employees, those costs are only going to go up, regardless of whether or not you continue to make the sort of revenue you’ve historically made from video views, which leads to having to rely more on merch sales, and patreon, and “other” revenue streams just to keep everyone paid. i mean, who knew, right?
I rarely watch his videos, but that’s because when I have, he clearly has direct financial entanglements and conflicts with the same major brands he’s discussing or “reviewing”.
For a channel his size and reach, I can’t imagine those aren’t enough to cover his overhead, unless he’s made some really terrible business decisions.
This is, of course, entirely speculation and based off of calculations pulled from my brown star, so maybe I’m wrong about that.
I’ve been using Clarity on iOS and macOS for wallpapers. Costs $5 a year. Wallpapers are high quality. My only complaint is the macOS version has less selection and features compared to the iOS version.
Respectfully, I’m honestly confused by this why are you paying any amount of money for wallpapers? I’ve never had an issue finding high quality images for my devices, phone or desktop. What exactly is the service doing that makes paying $5 the easier option?
It’s so cheap that I haven’t given it much critical thought. For me I suppose it’s mainly convenience. The iOS version has some shortcuts and widgets I find convenient for discovering new wallpapers. The Mac version is a little menubar app. I change my wallpapers frequently and I don’t necessarily want to open a website everytime to do that.
Maybe I’m scarred but I have a reflexive distrust for any usage of “pumped” or “super excited” in a commercial context. No matter the subject.
